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Remember the infamous encryption fight between the FBI and Apple for unlocking an iPhone belonging to terrorist Syed Farook behind the San Bernardino 2015 mass shooting that killed 14 people?

The same Apple vs. FBI case where Apple refused to help feds access data on the locked iPhone and, later the Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly paid over a million dollars to a vendor for unlocking the shooter's iPhone.

For keeping the iPhone hack secret, three news organizations—The Associated Press, USA Today, and Vice Media—sued the FBI last year under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and forced the agency to reveal the name of the company and the amount it was paid to unlock the iPhone.

However, unfortunately, they failed.

A US federal judge ruled Saturday that the FBI does not have to disclose the name of or how much it paid a private company for an iPhone hacking tool that unlocked Farook's iPhone.

Apple vs. FBI was one of the biggest legal battles in which Apple was being forced to build a backdoored version of its iOS that could have helped the agency unlock Farook's iPhone, but the company refused.

After weeks of arguments, the US government withdrew its motion and announced it had obtained an alternative method to unlock the iPhone from an "outside party."

A few months later, The Associated Press, USA Today, and Vice Media sued the FBI, arguing that the public have a right to know how the government spent taxpayer funds for the iPhone hack.

The news organisations also claimed the existence of a serious vulnerability in the iPhone could be a danger to the public.

However, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the District of Columbia ruled this weekend that the information on vendor and hacking tool used is exempt from mandatory disclosure under the government transparency law.

"It is logical and plausible that the vendor may be less capable than the FBI of protecting its proprietary information in the face of a cyber attack," the judge said.

"The FBI's conclusion that releasing the name of the vendor to the general public could put the vendor's systems, and thereby crucial information about the technology, at risk of incursion is a reasonable one."

Regarding the cost of the hacking tool, the federal judge also agreed with the US government that revealing the price the government paid for unlocking iPhone could harm national security.

"Releasing the purchase price would designate a finite value for the technology and help adversaries determine whether the FBI can broadly utilise the technology to access their encrypted devices," Chutkan said.

"Since the release of this information might 'reduce the effectiveness of a critical classified source and method', it is reasonable to expect that disclosure could endanger national security."

Last year, former FBI Director James Comey indirectly disclosed that the agency reportedly paid around $1.3 Million for the hacking tool that helped the agency break into Farook's iPhone 5C.

Although Comey said the hacking tool the FBI bought was only effective against an iPhone 5C running iOS 9 and not on later versions of iPhone such as the 5S, 6 and 6S, the agency could theoretically find a way to expand the tool's effort or build a similar implementation to hack higher models.

FBI to Apple: We'll Unlock iPhone by Our Own

Now the Feds say they may be able to crack the iPhone without the Apple's assistance after all.

In a court filing [PDF] submitted on Monday in a central California federal court, the DOJ requested a motion to cancel a Tuesday hearing and to suspend the proceedings at least until next month.

United States Magistrate Sheri Pym, the judge who previously ordered Apple to help the FBI unlock the encrypted iPhone, granted the request.

The cancelled hearing is because the FBI wants some time to test an alternate method for unlocking the shooter's iPhone that will not involve Apple building a backdoored iOS version.

Although the DOJ declined to comment on who is providing help to the FBI, this doesn't mean the case has been closed because the Feds still have to make sure their new technique will work.

"On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone," the motion reads.
"Testing is required to determine whether it is a [feasible] method that'll not compromise data on Farook's iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case."

FBI Wants Encryption Backdoor to Unlock More iPhones

The Feds likely already discovered this alternative method, but sought Apple's help to create a backdoor so that they could exploit the precedent for solving other pending cases, as the agency is seeking Apple's help to unlock iPhones in at least nine other cases.

But, there are some points the FBI must keep in mind before trying their alternate way to get into Farook's iPhone 5C.

If you copy the hard drive, all the data from the iPhone will remain scrambled, which will be of no use.

If you enter 10 wrong passwords, the whole iPhone will be wiped off, which means if your method fails, you'll never recover the data from the shooter's iPhone.

However, if the FBI method isn't able to unlock Farook's iPhone, the agency will again have to go back to the court to enforce the order on Apple.

Who, according to you, is this outside party?

Hacker? Security researcher? Or some Cyber-forensic expert? Let us know in the comments below.

In the escalating battle between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Apple over iPhone encryption, former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai just sided with Apple's refusal to unlock iPhone.

Yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook refused to comply with a federal court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone owned by one of the terrorists in the mass shootings in San Bernardino, California, in December.

Here's What the FBI is Demanding:

The federal officials have asked Apple to make a less secure version of its iOS that can be used by the officials to brute force the 4-6 digits passcode on the dead shooter's iPhone without getting the device's data self-destructed.

Cook called the court order a "chilling" demand that "would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect." He argued that to help the FBI unlock the iPhone would basically providing an Encryption Backdoor that would make the products less secure.

Backdoor for Government, Backdoor for All

However, Apple is worried that once this backdoor gets created and handed over to the FBI, there would be chances that the backdoor will likely get into the hands of malicious hackers who could use it for evil purposes.

Although many politicians, including Donald Trump, have slammed Apple's decision, Google has stepped up and taken a public stand in support of Apple's decision.

"I agree 100 percent with the courts," Trump said in a statement. "But to think that Apple won't allow us to get into her cell phone, who do they think they are? No, we have to open it up."

Google Sided with Apple

In a series of tweets late Wednesday, Pichai sided with Apple while saying "forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users' privacy" and "requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent."

However, Pichai took more than 12 hours to talk about this burning issue, after Edward Snowden pointed out that Google had not yet stepped forward to speak up on his stand.

"The @FBI is creating a world where citizens rely on #Apple to defend their rights, rather than the other way around," Snowden tweeted on Wednesday. Snowden called on Google to stand with Apple, saying, "This is the most important tech case in a decade."

Pichai's stance is basically:

The technology companies will give its customers' data to law enforcement when it is required to, but the companies will not put in a "Backdoor" for the government.

While the statements made by Pichai is not quite as forceful as Cook's statement published in an open letter to its customers, we can assume both Google and Apple are together, at least in the sense that the federal agencies are asking too much.

The Tech Giant Apple has come into an entangled situation which could be a potential security threat for Apple users in near future: Help the FBI Unlock an iPhone.

The US Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym has ordered Apple to provide a reasonable technical assistance in solving a critical case of Syed Farook; who with his wife Tashfeen Malik planned a coordinated "2015 San Bernardino attack" that killed 14 people injured 22.

As part of the investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had seized the Farook's iPhone 5C that would be considered as an insufficient evidence until and unless the iPhone gets unlocked by any means.

Previously, Apple had made several crystal clear statements about its Encryption Policy, stating that even the company is not able to decrypt any phone data as the private key lies at the user's end.

A similar problem encountered three years back with Lavabit, who was forced to shut down its services soon after when FBI demands SSL keys to snoop the emails.

However, despite forcing or ordering Apple to break the encryption and unlock the suspect’s iPhone, judges have ordered the company to find an alternative way to unlock iPhone, keeping data intact.

Can Apple Unlock iPhone? Yes, Here's How:

Here the passcode a user enters is itself used as part of the encryption key and thus, it is impossible for an attacker or even Apple itself to unlock iPhone until the user re-inputs the passcode.

Besides Data Protection, Apple offers "Auto-Destruct Mode" security feature that will erase all the data on the iPhone if an incorrect password is entered 10 times concurrently, making the data unrecoverable.

So, Judge Pym wants Apple to come up with an alternative that should increase the brute force attempts from 10 to millions, in order to prevent the data from getting self-destructed.

Apple has not yet confirmed whether it is possible to write such a code that can bypass iOS Auto-Destruct feature.

But, if it's possible, it would provide an alternative backdoor mechanism to every law enforcement and intelligence agency to unlock iPhone by simply brute forcing 4-6 Digit Pins effectively within few hours.

Here we support Apple policy not to help break its users' encryption, because once a master key is created to unlock that particular iPhone, we're sure that the US government will misuse this power and demand for the key again and again in near future for unlocking other phones.

Apple Rejects FBI Demands

Apple has dismissed the court order to unlock San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone.

"The United States government has demanded that Apple takes an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand."

"We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone."

Security researchers at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have worked for almost a decade to target security keys used to encrypt data stored on Apple devices in order to break the system.

Citing the top-secret documents obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept blog reported that among an attempt to crack encryption keys implanted into Apple's mobile processor, the researchers working for CIA had created a dummy version of Xcode.

CIA’s WEAPON TO HACK APPLE DEVICES

Xcode is an Apple’s application development tool used by the company to create the vast majority of iOS apps. However using the compromised development software, CIA, NSA or other spies agencies were potentially allowed to inject surveillance backdoor into programs distributed on Apple's App Store.

In addition, the custom version of Xcode could also be used to spy on users, steal passwords, account information, intercept communications, and disable core security features of Apple devices.

The latest documents from the National Security Agency’s internal systems revealed that the researchers’ work was presented at its 2012 annual gathering called the "Jamboree" -- CIA sponsored secretive event which has run for nearly a decade -- at a Lockheed Martin facility in northern Virginia.

KEYLOGGER FOR MAC COMPUTERS

According to the report, "essential security keys" used to encrypt data stored on Apple’s devices have become a major target of the research team.

Overall, the U.S. government-sponsored researchers are seeking ways to decrypt this data, as well as penetrate Apple's firmware, using both "physical" and "non-invasive" techniques.

In addition to this, the security researchers also presented that how they successfully modified the OS X updater -- a program used to deliver updates to laptop and desktop computers -- in an attempt to install a "keylogger" on Mac computers.

HACKING ENCRYPTION KEYS

Another presentation from 2011 showed different techniques that could be used to hack Apple's Group ID (GID) -- one of the two encryption keys that Apple places on its iPhones.

One of the techniques involved studying the electromagnetic emissions of the GID and the amount of power used by the iPhone’s processor in order to extract the encryption key, while a separate method focused on a "method to physically extract the [Apple's] GID key."

According to Matthew Green, a cryptography expert at Johns Hopkins University’s Information Security Institute, "Tearing apart the products of U.S. manufacturers and potentially putting backdoors in software distributed by unknowing developers all seems to be going a bit beyond ‘targeting bad guys.’ It may be a means to an end, but it’s a hell of a means."

Although the documents do not specify how successful or not these surveillance operations have been against Apple, it once again provoke the ongoing battle between spy agencies and tech companies, as well as the dishonesty of the US government.

'SPIES GONNA SPY'

On one hand, where President Barack Obama criticized China for forcing tech companies to install security backdoors for the purpose of government surveillance. On the other hand, The Intercept notes that China is just following America's lead, that’s it.

"Spies gonna spy," said Steven Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia University and former chief technologist for the FTC. "I’m never surprised by what intelligence agencies do to get information. They’re going to go where the info is, and as it moves, they’ll adjust their tactics. Their attitude is basically amoral: whatever works is OK."

We have already reported about NSA and GCHQ’s various surveillance programs including PRISM, XkeyScore, DROPOUTJEEP, and many more.

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